Do Animals in Chernobyl’s Fallout Zone Glow? | Hacker News Reader

Do Animals in Chernobyl’s Fallout Zone Glow?

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49 pointssheri29 comments

I visited Chernobyl a couple of years ago and was stunned by the amount of large fish in the waterways (a canal now cut off from the Dnieper river, IIRC). It seemed you could almost walk from bank to bank on the swarming fish.

It made me wonder if this is what European waterways were generally like before us humans fished and fished and fished and polluted the Rhine, Danube, Volga, Dnieper, and other major European rivers.

Apparently this forest on the border between Belarus and Poland is quite amazing (It was mentioned in "The World Without Us"):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Białowieża_Forest

Perhaps. In Nordic countries the sheer abundance of lakes and ponds lead to somewhat similar things.

"Biomass overgrowth of lakes and annual blue-green algae bloom as a result of eutrophication has reduced the overall use of water resources as seen from a point of recreational and leisure use. Also fish stocks have changed so that less valuable fish dominate at the cost of valuable fish like salmon and trout. Selective fishing is an effective way to reduce the overgrowth of less valuable fish populations and at the same time reduce eutrophication of water bodies." http://www.hoitokalastus.com/hoitokalastus_en.html

I.e. they require certain amount of fishing to remain useful in that regard.

Not just the rivers but the seas as well. There are comments in literature from the 17th century very similar to yours, talking about crossing the oceans on the backs of fish.

This is a nice article. There's a problem with a lot of science reporting that people just report the controversy. Most people cannot assess a scientific paper (if the article bothers to link to the actual research) and so it'd be great if media could do a breakdown - "suitable sample?" "randomised?" "controlled?" "peer reviewed?".

Some old reports:

Wildlife preserve not scientifically justified (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6946210.stm)

Significant impact on biodiversity and population numbers (but also that this is a polarised debate) (http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/14250489)

Chernobyl birds have small brains (http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9387000/938...)

Insect decline (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7949314.stm)

I would like to know the opinion of others more knowledgeable: can't it just be because humans have such a long life span? So, maybe the animals die before the radiation actually has any effect?

That is definitely one aspect. Shorter lifespans mean less lifetime in which to develop cancer.

Cancer is kind of associated with long life span in general, even without external radiation flux, but there are other ways that radiation can be harmful. A given amount of radiation received is more likely to damage cells that quickly divide (especially gametes) and cells that have little or no provision for repair.

So at relatively high levels of radiation you could well see that individual organisms tend to do well enough but have children with more birth defects, are more frail, have their vision deteriorate faster, etc.

I'm not sure that the radiation levels even in the Chernobyl exclusion zone are high enough for that, necessarily, but there's unfortunately a pretty wide gulf between "no effect" and developing cancer.

That's correct. With humans, everybody gets cancer sooner or later, if they live long enough.

the problem with some parts of the article is that in the hard high level contaminated parts we have small animal populations and in the exclusion zone parts not highly contaminated we increasing animal populations coming form other areas. Without some way methodology to weigh or readjust the numbers with new weights any study will generate error prone conclusions.

Not only that but when an animal has a shorter life-span due to radiation where do the effects show up? Its not showing in the population increase as the dying happens after the animal has given its maximum number of offspring as the study is studying long-term radiation effects from long-term radiation.

Well... one cool thing about Chernobyl is those black mushrooms in the reactor, that do radiosyntesys (yes, they "eat" radiation, awesome).

But no, they don't glow, quite the opposite (they absorb a wide range of electromagnetic frequencies to its internal use).

Could you provide a link for more information about those mushrooms?

I like thinking about those natural anomalies that you know some brilliant mind will attempt to mimic with technology, and that is one function that could have serious potential.

http://www.zmescience.com/ecology/chernobyl-fungus-radiotrop...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus

“Since ionizing radiation is prevalent in outer space, astronauts might be able to rely on fungi as an inexhaustible food source on long missions or for colonizing other planets,”

It's an interesting thought that our future Buzz Aldrins and Neil Armstrongs may be sustained by a diet of radioactive mushrooms. That sounds like a Marvel origin story.

One important detail is that the funguses are not necessarily radioactive [x]. They absorb the gamma radiation, that it's similar to the X-rays. After a radiography, x-ray or gamma-ray exposure the things don't become radioactive. But too much radiation kills almost anything. This process is used to produce irradiated food (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation) that is safe for eating (when the irradiation is done properly).

[x] The funguses inside Chernovil are surely radioactive because they also absorb the water that is contaminated with radioactive elements. Don't eat them :).

  "Those studies found mammal diversity and abundance equal to 
  that of a protected nature reserve, with rare species 
  including bears, lynx, river otter, and badger as well as 
  introduced herds of European bison and Przewalski’s horses. 
  Bird diversity is even richer and includes 61 rare species.
  Whooper swans—never before reported in the region—now appear 
  regularly."

I love how the best conclusion you can get from this research is that even nuclear fallout is better for the environment than the presence of humans in the area.

wow, the title reflects how epic is the development of journalism standards.

I would assume they were playing too much of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Series[1] or used it as source when writing the article title. Even half suggesting that animals would glow is link bait and just silly. I mean, it's not like animals glowed after the atomic attacks on Japan or anywhere nuclear weapons have been tested. Granted that there's differences in the radiation, but still it's kind of specious reasoning.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:_Shadow_of_Chern...

Radiation leading to living things glowing/becoming gigantic is a trope from the '50s, if not older.

The title is stupid, but I liked the article. I would be happy if the submitter changed the title here to something more accurate like "Current State of the Animals Chernobyl’s Fallout Zone".

This is the money quote:

>The prevailing scientific view of the exclusion zone has become that it is an unintentional wildlife sanctuary. This conclusion rests on the premise that radiation is less harmful to wildlife populations than we are.

I don't consider myself an environmentally focused person, but the effects humans have on the ecosystem cannot be overstated. I'm not saying the effects are negative or positive, just that we as a species need to be very cognizant of the changes we cause, and we need to think critically about what ramifications those changes have.

Species that have much lower lifespans than humans are less likely to develop cancer in their lifetimes. These species particularly benefit from the lack of humans around Chernobyl more than they suffer from the high radiation.

Animals are a lot more tolerant of death and mayhem, too. For example, if radiation caused e.g. a 10% incidence of horrible birth defects, a lot of animal populations could survive that just fine, but humans would be horrified at the very idea.

Despite the fact that somewhere around a third of pregnancies already miscarry. People are weird.

Humans will survive just as well.

'Being horrified' is not a credible threat to survival.

In fact, in both cases the affected individuals of any species will die and the rest will go on.

Of course humans will survive, but they'll avoid the area if they can.

Humans deal with it just fine.

  In 2009, there were 31 countries reported in which at least 10% of children under five died.

For comparison:

  In 2011, the world average was 51 (5.1%), down from 87 (8.7%) in 1990.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_mortality

We "deal with it" in the sense that we can survive and even thrive in such an environment. But we don't "deal with it just fine" in terms of accepting it when we could easily change it by e.g. avoiding a particular area.

The "no man's land" DMZ between the Koreas is doing very well: http://news.discovery.com/earth/korean-dmz-teems-with-wildli...

Edit: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/06/wildlife-h...

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